The Trouble With Socialist Anarchism
Murray Rothbard was an advocate of the stateless society, but he was never accepted by the anarchist movement and is still considered more a "capitalist lackey" than anarchist thinker. Indeed, anarcho-capitalism has always been considered an oxymoron by the self-proclaimed "true" anarchists. Some of the problems persist in the anarchist version of socialism. The problems arise due to the fact that socialists generally tend to have a static view of society, which makes them totally ignorant of how things change over time. Socialists would probably not admit this is the case, since they do know that things have been changing through the course of history (Karl Marx said so) and that things never seem to stay the same. But still they argue as if "ceteris paribus" is the divine principle of reality, and it is not. FULL ARTICLE
Comments (168)
I don't understand the insistence (in Bylund's article) on claiming that time preference is the primary cause of worker "underpayment". From what I know, it accounts for only a tiny sliver of the underpayment. Recall that in the socialist heyday, annual risk-free real interest rates were on the order of 1-3%. (!) Also at the time, a worker's labor-product might be sold 1-2 months after production. So, doing some quick math, this would convince a socialist why workers, assuming pure fairness and allowing for time preference, would be underpaid by under one half of one percent. In reality however, what drove the socialist movement was a perceived, persistent underpayment of more like 40%.
The way to account for "underpayment" is through financial risk (i.e., risk that the product will not be able to be sold at a price that can recover costs), search costs (cost of connecting supply and demand), costs of finding arbitrage opportunities, and general costs of coordinating the process. These are much more significant causes of the perceived "underpayment" (difference between compensation and change in sale price of item).
Published: March 30, 2006 8:47 AM
I get into regular arguments with socialist/communist anarchists in a large MySpace group. They oppose "absentee landlords," wage labor, and view anything to do with "markets" with either outright hostility or considerable skepticism. Coming at them from a time preference angle isn't one I've tried, so I appreciate this article.
Published: March 30, 2006 8:56 AM
I partially agree with Person's analysis.
However, it is purely an empirical matter, whether it is financial risk or time-preference that is the largest cause of the difference between the market-value of what a worker generates, and what he is paid by his employer.
Also, for rebuking the socialist position, it's worth noting that not everything that someone produces has a clear market-value. Depending on the liquidity of the product, and whether or not it is even placed on the market, it's market-value may be sketchy, or non-existant.
Published: March 30, 2006 8:58 AM
As you know communal anarchists regard private property as a convention - one they regard as harmful.
This is the way that they counter such attacks as "you are just statist by another name, you wish "the community" or "the people" to crush freedom by stealing all private property and forbidding the creation or trading of any new private property".
There are two ways to argue against communal anarchists. One can (as you do) make the economic (utilitarian?) case for private property.
Or one can simply deny that private property is a convention, and uphold natural law (or rather those interpretations of natural law that hold that private property is natural rather than those that hold it is a convention).
Of course the latter option can lead to deadlock "stealing is wrong", "I do not accept that it is stealing".
However, all such basic positions can lead to deadlock - that does not mean they are wrong.
For example, murder and rape just are "wrong", it is foolish (indeed rather disgusting) to try and prove that they are wrong by arguing, for example, that the pain of a victim of gang rape is greater than the pleasure of the rapists.
The fact that criminals get pleasure from their crimes is not relevant - as right and wrong are not a matter of pleasure and pain (in short, when it comes to basic matters, utilitarianism is false).
The English language has a basic flaw in that it uses the same word "good" to mean both good as in morally right, and good as in pleasure.
I am told that other languages also have this flaw, so one must careful to explain what one means.
This is relevant because communal anarchists will not tend to accept your economic arguments.
They may not be relgious people (indeed they are likely to be athiests) but the same strong moral motivation drives them as drives people to be monks and nuns.
One should reply to such a moral position with a moral position, rather than just an argument (however true) that economic output will be greater if private property is not violated.
Anarchocommunalist communities are in no way attacked by libertarians. If the communal anarchists wish to set up such communities (whether religious or nonreligious) they should be allowed to do so.
But should we not be allowed to have our own communities in which private property is allowed?
If the anarchocommunalist says "no", an economic argument will not move their objection.
As you know, we are then dealing with a fundemental denial of the right of people to live in a different way to the way the anarchocommunalist wishes.
In short such a person is a communalist first and last - they are no form of anarchist at all.
Published: March 30, 2006 8:59 AM
Yes, it's weird how the few socialist anarchists I've come across hate one thing more than the state itself, and that is private property. None of them realize that the state is the biggest invader of private property.
Published: March 30, 2006 9:25 AM
I noticed that the Anarchist FAQ (that was linked to in the article) has a section that specifically deals with the Time Preference argument. Scroll down to:
C.2.7 But wouldn't the "time value" of money justify charging interest in a more egalitarian capitalism?
http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secC2.html
Published: March 30, 2006 9:32 AM
Per Bylund wrote: "This brings us to a third and last important point that follows directly from the fact that values are subjective: there are only individuals."
One could argue that you have this backwards.
Per Bylund wrote: "The choice should be the individual's and there is no way we can say it is "right" or "wrong" — it is for the individual to decide."
This is not quite true either. I don't know if this was your intention, but it sounds almost like moral subjectivism. Moral subjectivism does not automatically follow from Austrian subjective (or agent-relative) value theory, however. On an Aristotelian basis it is not impossible to know, albeit not with any firm certainty or precision, whether a persons actions were right or wrong for them or in general. Certainly we must hold to a certain amount of Socratic ignorance on this: we don't know the full context of others, their own individual eudaimonia, talents, hierarchy of values, circumstances, and so forth. This, Aristotle would say, is the limitation of the subject matter. But it is also certainly not impossible, otherwise human beings would be incapable of social interaction. It is then important to distinguish between two important categories of right and wrong: virtue and vice on the one hand and rights-respecting and rights-violating (criminal) behavior on the other. It is only the latter that justifies the retaliatory use of force to prohibit, prevent, and punish such egregiously wrong behavior. Just because someone is commiting vice is no reason to initiate force against them for "their own good" or the "good of society."
Published: March 30, 2006 9:49 AM
Fried Egg: let's be precise. Does that FAQ "deal with" time preference issues, or does it scoff at them and then re-iterate obsolete economics?
Published: March 30, 2006 10:13 AM
Fried Egg,
Thanks for the laugh. I have been alive for almost 40 years in the United States, and I have yet to see anyone forced to work for someone else in the United States. All laborers are free to accumulate their own capital and become single proprietors, or to group themselves together to form their own capital/labor cooperatives, and thus free themselves of capital's "tyranny".
Anarcho-socialism is quite nonsensical to my mind.
Published: March 30, 2006 10:32 AM
Charles, I'm not sure this article supports your position regarding absentee landlords. It says:
"The reason they can do this, socialists claim, is because of state-enforced property privileges indirectly forcing labor workers into wage slavery."
and
"I will not argue with the identification of many historical and contemporary employment schemes being de facto usury due to privileges handed out to capitalists by the political class."
Paul, those who argue for private property, as you do, defend it with the same blind loyalty you ascribe to your opponents. Too many private property advocates are too silent on corporations' "right" to private property. This, at least, we can easily identify as a convention.
That leaves personal private property to be debated.
"Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, even though he is famous for stating "property is theft" (meaning property privileges causing exploitative conditions), also stated that "property is freedom" in the sense that man is only free when he is the sole owner of that which is in his possession and that which he creates."
There is no contradiction here, although I would've prefered if he used the word "possession" the secont time around. As in: "Property is theft, possession is freedom".
What's the difference, you ask? Property is exclusionary in a way that has to be enforced. Possession can be exclusionary, but only when exclusion is naturally enforced.
Allow me to demonstrate: Let's say someone owns most (or all) fertile land in a country. Private property says he can let his land go unused, drive the locals to starvation, so he can get them to work for him on his own terms. If the locals don't accept this situation, this owner clearly needs the backing of a strong power to enforce it. Private possession, on the other hand, allows him to remain the exclusive owner of the land only if he exploits it fully and leaves no room for another. To exploit it fully, he needs to hire the locals on their terms, else they stop exploiting the land for him and he forfeits his rights over it, leaving the locals as the new owners (in a possession sense) of the land.
Published: March 30, 2006 10:51 AM
Yancey, we're talking here about a hypothetical, ideal society. If you think the USA represents just that, that it is a beacon of freedom, you're beyond salvation. The only way you didn't see anyone forced to work for someone else is if you're blind or have no grasp of economics.
Published: March 30, 2006 10:57 AM
My assumption (not having explored Black Anarchists thoroughly) is that their assertion is that Force is necessary to establish one person's right over property versus another, and therefore a State springs from that necessity (hence "minarchists" who want just enough State to preserve the existing allocations from Force).
I guess they use a concept, one that I'd like to get an amplification on from the Austrian perspective, is who has a "right to first possession" over resources that enter production, and therefore have an opportunity to labor upon and take possession of it by a right associated with said labor. I think, also, in terms of the US in the 1800's when, in some territories, the homesteaders were the unfair folk, using the power of the State to drive out free-rangers, while others, the free-rangers terrified homesteaders while the authorities swung in behind the free-rangers. It all seemed to depend on paid enforcers with a semblance of ligitimacy to decide which was right, and all seemed to come down to who could better pay the Force.
At the end of the day, how do broad resources come into one's possession and hold "good title", at least resources beyond their own current needs?
Published: March 30, 2006 11:06 AM
Cosmin,
No, it is you that is blind. Nothing, and I mean that literally, prevents a worker from saving and buying his own property/capital and supplying his own means, even the taxes that the government takes from him. You and many others mistake voluntary transactions as being forced- and I have found, as have others on this thread, that reasoned argument with such people is impossible.
Published: March 30, 2006 11:15 AM
Yancey, your "I know you are, but what am I?" type arguments notwithstanding, even you must admit that government taxes prevent (even if only partially) a worker from saving. Add to that monopoly on money creation, government enforced property and intellectual property "rights", etc. and workers have no surplus (or minimal) from their cost of survival that they can save.
Published: March 30, 2006 11:24 AM
Fried Egg,
Thanks for the link to the socialist anarchist’s FAQ. Their ideology is coming further into focus and it is clear that it is founded on severe economic ignorance. I can also see they hold to it with a great deal of tenacity. Therefore, rather than debate them, I would simply allow that in anarchy, they should be free to form their own socialist covenantal communities, and allow that the anarcho-capitalists would form their free market, private property communities. The community that is closer founded on natural law, truth and justice, I am quite convinced, will also just happen to be the vastly more productive, affluent and finally more attractive community to live in.
The socialists will learn, finally, that what the Austrians are espousing is not how they think things SHOULD work. They are just explaining how things are, and what economic system is therefore justified and so therefore WILL work.
Published: March 30, 2006 11:26 AM
Paul Edwards: the problem you'll find is that ansocs consider any such partition of the world (even 50/50) to be "unfair" because they still have to accord the other 50% "capitalist" rights, and have to live in a "capitalist" structure. Their biggest complaint is that people keep fleeing to capitalist societies "despite" their "inefficiency". According to them, the only "fair test" of their ideology involves eliminating *all* vestiges of capitalism (because otherwise capitalist will control some "vital" resource [which of course only probably became vital because they figured out the best way to use it]). In contrast, ancaps believe they could show the world the success of their system with only a tiny portion of the word. That should tell you a lot.
Published: March 30, 2006 11:40 AM
Person,
I agree. It is a weird sort of anarchy from which no one is allowed to deviate. In other words, it is not anarchy at all.
Published: March 30, 2006 11:49 AM
Cosmin,
So you didn't like the first part of my argument? Then you should refrain from utilizing such tactics yourself.
I will freely grant that the state, in the form of property taxes, ultimately enslaves a person to some extent, regardless of how he attempts to sustain himself, but I will not grant that voluntary transactions between peoples represents the use of force by one over the other. If one chooses to work for GM in return for wages rather than plant a garden in his back yard, then that does not represent the use of force.
Published: March 30, 2006 12:01 PM
I've noticed one thing in all my readings on socialism;The coincidence of collectivized farming and the sealing of the countries borders(from the inside).And vice versa.People will put up with a lot, but they won't sit still and starve to death.Person, you are spot on.
Published: March 30, 2006 12:01 PM
Here is my question: Why do Austrians and Anarcho-Caps embrace the prejorative ascribed to them (by which I mean defenders of private property through the ages) by Marx? Why call yourself "Capitalist" and claim that the socialists are attacking straw men, when the capitalism that they condemn isn't the free market at all but STATE CAPITALISM. State Capitalism has a cartelized market, socialized risks/privatized profits scheme, and now fiat money. Why not let us cast off this albatros that should only be hung around the neck of mercantilists, fascists-corporatists and such. Let us instead be... Free Marketists, Market Anarchists. Why don't we define ourselves?
Published: March 30, 2006 12:09 PM
Yancey, not everyone has a garden in their back yard, or even a back yard, when you allow property claims on unused resources. Consequently, their accepting to work for GM isn't a choice. It was made under duress, under threat of starvation.
Person, people fleeing to capitalist societies doesn't constitute an endorsement of capitalism as it exists today. They are fleeing awful conditions in their own countries that are often brought about by the very same "capitalist" societes (or like-minded local individuals) they flee to. Their action is not a solution, and they didn't intend it that way. It is a way out for them as individuals, but it enforces the situation that lead to their seeking a way out. Hence, it is no solution at all. They merely switch sides to being the exploiter rather than the exploited. Exploitation still occurs.
Yancey, rejection of private property is not a deviation from anarchy, since private property itself is the deviation. Read my first message in this thread. How telling that noone commented on it...
Published: March 30, 2006 12:24 PM
Person,
If it is as you say, and the socialist anarchists advocate coercion, rather than voluntary covenants to govern their communities and even the communities of others, then they are simply statists of a dangerous form: Dishonest to the core in that they pretend to advocate the very opposite of what they in fact do advocate, the coercive state.
Published: March 30, 2006 12:42 PM
Cosmin, I'll venture a response. First, it's ridiculous to claim that working for a "wage" is "under duress". If one instance of selling a service for a fee is exploitation, all are, up to and including the $500/hour attorney. Precisely what alternative must be given before "wage labor" can be a free choice? In a throwback to the physiocrats, you and ansocs respond that individuals must have free access to fertile land, and this free access would be a reality if only those dastardly landowners didn't kick you off land you weren't using. But in reality, given the current population of the earth there simply is not enough land to give everyone fertile, subsistence farmland. The present difficulty of getting free farmland arises from this fundamental reality, not because of the property system prevailing. If you switched to a possession property system, people would just grab as much land as they could arguably be considered "using"; this land would cover all known fertile land before covering a small portion of the world's population. It would be at least as hard to get free land as it is now.
Land speculation arises because of uncertainty about the future. Better uses than currently prevail could arise in the future. In a possession system, all land would be snatched up and held out of this future, better use. It would prevent inter-temporal allocation of scarce resources. Socialst possession systems simply do not accomplish what you suggest.
Published: March 30, 2006 12:49 PM
Person,
I think Cosmin has just proven your point.
Paul Edwards,
You, of course, are correct-they are dishonest to the core.
Published: March 30, 2006 12:57 PM
Yancey -- I don't follow. How did he prove my point? And what point?
Published: March 30, 2006 1:04 PM
Charles, I'm not sure this article supports your position regarding absentee landlords. It says: "The reason they can do this, socialists claim, is because of state-enforced property privileges indirectly forcing labor workers into wage slavery." And "I will not argue with the identification of many historical and contemporary employment schemes being de facto usury due to privileges handed out to capitalists by the political class."
I'm not clear as to what you mean, Cosmin. My comment was about the pleasure of reading a new way to confront the advocates of stateless socialism's economic arguments. I wasn't trying to imply Per Bylund's article effectively tackled the AnCom's "absentee landlord" claim.
One of the things I find myself repeating over and over again to the MySpace group is actually existing "capitalism" (to use one of their terms) isn't what I advocate. I have to tell them property rights can be defended without the state and the institutions that would do that don't constitute that which I want to abolish. I've said several times that the state isn't legitimate in what it does...up to and including the defense of private property. That usually sets them back and twists them into attacks on wage labor, negative market outcomes, and their unyielding assertion that the employee-employer relationship is no less authoritarian than the citizen-state relationship.
Published: March 30, 2006 1:04 PM
Cosmin,
OK, I’ll comment too.
“Let's say someone owns most (or all) fertile land in a country.�
Who other than a state can do such a thing? A homesteader cannot homestead beyond the limits of property that he can use. From here, your argument refutes the justification for a state, nothing else.
“Private property says he can let his land go unused, drive the locals to starvation, so he can get them to work for him on his own terms.�
And the locals own no land and have never homesteaded the land? How does one arrive at such contrived scenarios without first the previous aggression of a state?
“If the locals don't accept this situation, this owner clearly needs the backing of a strong power to enforce it.�
Yes, sounds like a state, I agree. This scenario necessarily describes how a state might well behave.
“Private possession, on the other hand, allows him to remain the exclusive owner of the land only if he exploits it fully and leaves no room for another.�
Once the land has been homesteaded, and owned, the owner now owns it, period. It can be sold to someone else, who may use it or not, but he remains the owner as well, until he sells it, or gives it away.
“To exploit it fully, he needs to hire the locals on their terms, else they stop exploiting the land for him and he forfeits his rights over it, leaving the locals as the new owners (in a possession sense) of the land.�
Interesting concept of possession (property). You know, there is a section of my tool shed that I haven’t visited for several years and tools that sit there that I have not used for even longer. Tell me, have I forfeited my right to that section of my shed and the tools that sit there? Do I in fact no longer own these things? Your ethic is confused and can necessarily only lead to conflict.
Published: March 30, 2006 1:06 PM
Person: the problem you'll find is that ansocs consider any such partition of the world (even 50/50) to be "unfair" because they still have to accord the other 50% "capitalist" rights, and have to live in a "capitalist" structure. Their biggest complaint is that people keep fleeing to capitalist societies "despite" their "inefficiency"
is to be compared to the following from Cosmin: ....people fleeing to capitalist societies doesn't constitute an endorsement of capitalism as it exists today. They are fleeing awful conditions in their own countries that are often brought about by the very same "capitalist" societes (or like-minded local individuals) they flee to. Their action is not a solution, and they didn't intend it that way. It is a way out for them as individuals, but it enforces the situation that lead to their seeking a way out.
Published: March 30, 2006 1:16 PM
It is absolutely priceless to see the anarcho-capitalists calling the anarcho-comunists loons. I'll laugh my ass off on this one for days and days.
Published: March 30, 2006 1:20 PM
Paul, where do you get coercion from? Anarchism has only one principle: personnal liberty. Private property, insofar as it clashes with the personal liberty of non-owners, is met with force deployed in a defensive posturing. The initiator of force here is the owner.
Person, working for a wage in anarchy clearly isn't "under duress". It is, however, when the economy is shaped in such a way as to not allow an alternative. If, as you say, there isn't enough fertile land to give to everyone, your solution is to allow those who own it to let it remain unused?
That you believe that there is not enough fertile farmland to sustain the earth's population is your prerogative, but you are simply wrong. Deserts can be made fertile farmland with irrigation. Irrigation can use desalinized ocean water. Energy to desalinize can come from solar, wind, nuclear, or many other sources. The Earth could sustain ten times the population we have today. The only reason we have famine and poverty, with today's technology, is because it's very profitable to some. If there were no famine, how would anyone be convinced to work for the equivalent of a few cents per day? This situation only perdures because of the lack of anarchy.
However, this is all irrelevant. We should debate ideas here, not implementation. The idea that you're advocating is that the owner of a chain of mountains can stop me from skiing virgin peaks simply because. Don't you see that as an unwarranted restriction of my personal liberty?
Published: March 30, 2006 1:23 PM
Per Bylan wrote: "Indeed, anarcho-capitalism has always been considered an oxymoron by the self-proclaimed 'true' anarchists." If it is an oxymoron, implying that capitalism is not compatible with "true" anarchism, then the latter must be communal anarchism, which makes Bylan's statement true.
Then Fried wrote: "... communal anarchists regard private property as a convention - one they regard as harmful."
And Paul Marks suggested that while one can make the economic (utilitarian?) case for private property, the the communal anarchists will not accept this "economic" argument." They reject private property and markets as harmful if not coercive.
However this rejection becomes the flaw in their position.
Three issues are relevant at this point: "morality" (right vs wrong), "rights" (both natural and contractual), and "goods."
We have a natural right to life. This right implies the right to self defense. Self defense involves actions to protect private property. Thus private property, and the defense thereof, are part of the natural right to life.
Regarding the issues of "rights" vs "goods," as Geoffrey wrote: "The English language has a basic flaw in that it uses the same word "good" to mean both good as in morally right, and good as in pleasure." Regarding natural vs contractual rights and rights vs goods, Geoffrey wrote: "... it is important to distinguish between two categories of right and wrong: virtue and vice on the one hand and rights-respecting and rights-violating (criminal) behavior on the other. The latter justifies the retaliatory use of force to prohibit, prevent, and punish such egregiously wrong behavior."
Anarcho-capitalism wins both the economic and the moral argument against communal anachism.
Published: March 30, 2006 1:24 PM
zombie,
I think a more accurate description of the debate is "the capitalists calling the communists loons".
I have never been convinced either group is really anarchistic.
Published: March 30, 2006 1:25 PM
Per Bylund wrote: "Indeed, anarcho-capitalism has always been considered an oxymoron by the self-proclaimed 'true' anarchists." If it is an oxymoron, implying that capitalism is not compatible with "true" anarchism, then the latter must be communal anarchism, which makes Bylan's statement true.
Then Fried wrote: "... communal anarchists regard private property as a convention - one they regard as harmful."
And Paul suggested that while one can make the economic (utilitarian?) case for private property, the the communal anarchists will not accept this "economic" argument." They reject private property and markets as harmful if not coercive.
However this rejection becomes the flaw in their position.
Three issues are relevant at this point: "morality" (right vs wrong), "rights" (both natural and contractual), and "goods."
We have a natural right to life. This right implies the right to self defense. Self defense involves actions to protect private property. Thus private property, and the defense thereof, are part of the natural right to life.
Regarding the issues of "rights" vs "goods," as Geoffrey wrote: "The English language has a basic flaw in that it uses the same word "good" to mean both good as in morally right, and good as in pleasure." Regarding natural vs contractual rights and rights vs goods, Geoffrey wrote: "... it is important to distinguish between two categories of right and wrong: virtue and vice on the one hand and rights-respecting and rights-violating (criminal) behavior on the other. The latter justifies the retaliatory use of force to prohibit, prevent, and punish such egregiously wrong behavior."
Anarcho-capitalism wins both the economic and the moral argument against communal anachism.
Published: March 30, 2006 1:26 PM
Chad,
“Why do Austrians and Anarcho-Caps embrace the prejorative ascribed to them (by which I mean defenders of private property through the ages) by Marx? Why call yourself "Capitalist"…�
Austrians have been using the term “Capitalist� in an approving manner since Carl Menger. In p168 of his book “Principles of Economics�, he writes in a footnote “Capitalists and landowners do not, therefore, live on what they take away from laborers, but upon the services of their land and capital which have value, just as do labor services, both to individuals and to society.�
The complete footnote:
“Rodbertus (op. cit., pp. 117 ff.) argues that our social institutions make it possible for the owners of capital and land to take a part of the product of labor away from the laborers, and thereby live without working. His argument is based on the erroneous assumption that the entire result of a production process must be regarded as the product of labor. Labor services are only one of the factors of the production process, however, and are not economic goods in any higher degree than the other factors of production including the services of land and capital. Capitalists and landowners do not, therefore, live on what they take away from laborers, but upon the services of their land and capital which have value, just as do labor services, both to individuals and to society.�
http://www.mises.org/etexts/menger/Mengerprinciples.pdf
Published: March 30, 2006 1:35 PM
Cosmin, if you consider all land to be fertile, why did you add the "fertile" modifier to "land" in your earlier example? If you can't even use your own terminology consistently, how can we even communicate, let alone hope to convince each other of one's position?
Published: March 30, 2006 1:40 PM
Paul -- that's using "capitalist" to refer to an economic role, not proponent of free-market ideology.
Published: March 30, 2006 1:44 PM
Cosmin,
It comes only from the assumption that Person's assessment is correct that in anarchy, a socialist community would not accept the existence of a neighboring capitalist community, but would be compelled to eliminate by force, this capitalism whenever it was detected or had influence on the socialist community.
I was not aware that this is part of anarcho socialism, but if so, it is simply another brand of statism requiring organized and socialized aggression to maintain its goals.
Published: March 30, 2006 1:49 PM
Person,
Huh? :) Sounds like i must be out in left field on that question. Ignore me if i'm making no sense at all.
Published: March 30, 2006 1:52 PM
Paul, that was a reply to your previous comment. Let's tackle the newest one:
"And the locals own no land and have never homesteaded the land? How does one arrive at such contrived scenarios without first the previous aggression of a state?"
See Latin America.
"Yes, sounds like a state, I agree. This scenario necessarily describes how a state might well behave."
Private property can scale up to become as big as any state. You seem to realize that's wrong, but you don't believe it to be feasible. However, it existed in Venezuela, for example. The agrarian reform now undertaken there conforms to anarchist principles, even if it's implemented by a state. It is a defensive measure taken against the initiation of force perpetrated by private property.
"You know, there is a section of my tool shed that I haven’t visited for several years and tools that sit there that I have not used for even longer."
Exploitation of a resource includes having said resource available for imminent exploitation. That addresses your concern. I'd say you're safe, as long as you don't deny others the idea of having a tool shed. ;)
Published: March 30, 2006 1:53 PM
"Exploitation of a resource includes having said resource available for imminent exploitation."
That addresses my concern if it applies to my land as well as to my tool shed.
Published: March 30, 2006 1:56 PM
"Cosmin, if you consider all land to be fertile, why did you add the "fertile" modifier to "land" in your earlier example? If you can't even use your own terminology consistently, how can we even communicate, let alone hope to convince each other of one's position?"
I don't consider all land to be fertile. I consider a lot of land to have the potential to become fertile, but that developpement is being hampered by the same people who hamper the exploitation of current fertile land by claiming to have the right to let their "property" go unused.
Published: March 30, 2006 2:05 PM
"Me: And the locals own no land and have never homesteaded the land? How does one arrive at such contrived scenarios without first the previous aggression of a state?
"You: See Latin America."
I admit i have not yet studied Latin American history. Are you saying private individuals or corporations were able to obtain state-like coercive powers over a population, without involvement with and/or collusion with any state?
If i didn't know better i'd think you're presenting an instance that supports the need for a benevolent state to protect the little guys from big powerful private criminals. You're not thought, right? Because anarchy would not be the way to go in that case.
Published: March 30, 2006 2:06 PM
"That addresses my concern if it applies to my land as well as to my tool shed."
Of course it does. It's only natural. It's also entirely natural for starved peasants to take your land if its imminent exploitation is only lip-service.
Published: March 30, 2006 2:11 PM
Cosmin -- you do realize, don't you, that you can buy desert land dirt-cheap (sand-cheap?), right? Since it is obviously possible to convert this to fertile land (e.g., through hydroponics) as you just admitted, then obviously you have a viable alternative to wage labor and any wage labor you engage in is voluntary, right?
Empirical prediction: Cosmin will reverse his previous position and then claim that land "only counts" if it's naturally fertile. We will go back to step one and repeat. My blood pressure will rise.
Published: March 30, 2006 2:20 PM
Can someone write out, in simple terms, exactly what qualifies as homesteading? This is the one area of anarchism (I mean, of course, "anarcho-capitalism," which I've always thought was redundant) with which I have a bit of a philosophical problem.
Published: March 30, 2006 2:20 PM
"Are you saying private individuals or corporations were able to obtain state-like coercive powers over a population, without involvement with and/or collusion with any state?"
I'm not saying that. I'm merely disappointed that too many capitalists side with the corporations and individuals who "own" the land today, in Venezuela, for instance. Here's an article that I just found through google and that I've skimmed over.
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1384
And no, I'm not advocating a benevolent state. I wouldn't mind an anarchist state, though. :)
Published: March 30, 2006 2:27 PM
Paul,
Since buying my own tools would impoverish me, could you please tell me where your tool shed is?
Published: March 30, 2006 2:30 PM
Person, is this a "love it or leave it" argument?
Published: March 30, 2006 2:32 PM
Cosmin: no.
Published: March 30, 2006 2:39 PM
In that case, Person, permit me to issue my own money, don't charge me royalties for ideas on how to desalinize water (or any other idea), heck, I want to homestead, not buy, the desert(ed) land, don't charge me for oceanwater or access to it, and I'll gladly do that. However, deny me even only one of those things, and we'll be confronted with a situation of coerced labor, or slavery.
Published: March 30, 2006 2:57 PM
Cosmin: As long as your access to ocean water doesn't obligate anyone else to provide you with the means to get this ocean water, then I for one (as a market anarchist) see no objection to your plan.
I also reserve the right to refuse to accept your money if i don't think it's any good.
Published: March 30, 2006 3:08 PM
There's one thing I suspect anarcho-capitalists of endorsing, and that is corporations' right to property. Anyone care to articulate that for me? Also, explain to me how this abomination can be reffered to as natural?
Published: March 30, 2006 3:08 PM
"I also reserve the right to refuse to accept your money if i don't think it's any good."
That is your prerogative. My money is only good insofar as it gives you access to the produce of my labor. Not allowing me to print my own money, though, means not allowing me to be the master of my labor. I have to conform to the whims of those who have money. That is why wage labor is slavery.
Published: March 30, 2006 3:18 PM
Cosmin,
I take it that you don't consider the shareholders as owners of that property? Leaving aside the legal protections granted to corporations by the state (for which you will find many detractors amongst the "anarcho-capitalists), what is the "true anarchist's" position regarding the accumulation and combination of capital by multiple owners? To be owners, do they have to actively "work" the capital they accumulated and combined? What is the definition of "work"?
Published: March 30, 2006 3:19 PM
Yancey, the shareholders aren't the owners of that property. That's not how I consider things, it's how corporate law considers things. Shareholders are thus not liable for for the corporation's losses. They don't put their houses as collateral. How does a corporation even exist in anarchy? Where does it fit into: "there are only individuals"?
Published: March 30, 2006 3:25 PM
"Not allowing me to print my own money, though, means not allowing me to be the master of my labor. I have to conform to the whims of those who have money. That is why wage labor is slavery."
I doubt you'll find many here who'll defend goverment fiat money. Nor do I think many would deny you the right to issue your own currency. But somehow I doubt this is what most communists mean when they rail against "wage slavery" (hyperbole designed for maximun emotional impact).
If I'm wrong on this, my appologies.
Published: March 30, 2006 3:31 PM
Cosmin,
Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that anarchy exists. Within hypothetical society, 10 people decide they will reconfigure and pool their possessions to create a car factory and sell the product for other goods. However, rather than work the assembly line, they hire volunteers to work the line in return for half the product.
Who owns the car factory? Is there coercion?
Published: March 30, 2006 3:41 PM
Yancey,
"Since buying my own tools would impoverish me, could you please tell me where your tool shed is?"
LOL.
I do believe Cosmin said I get to keep my shed and the tools. But that is, unless of course, as he puts it, “its imminent exploitation is only lip-service�, which I must confess it is. Since I don’t have any plans to use those tools any time in the near future, I fear, based on Cosmin’s ethic, the starved peasants, (and you, Sir), may have a legitimate claim on those tools in my tool shed after all. (Therefore, I must remain quiet regarding their location!) :)
Published: March 30, 2006 3:53 PM
Paul,
Your silence about the location of the tool shed is oppressing me.
Published: March 30, 2006 3:56 PM
The way I see it, wage slavery is the opposite of full employment. You can get full employment through dictatorship, which is inefficient since the enforcement apparatus is a drain on the economy, but you can also get full employment through anarchy. Freedom for everyone means everybody works. The old, children and the handicapped rely on compassion. That's ok, since humans are compassionate. :) Whoever is capable of working but doesn't work, doesn't eat. (If he resorts to stealing, we can no longer say we have freedom for everyone). He dies and everybody who works remains. The only situation where people wouldn't work is if all needs are met, which can't happen since needs evolve. Hence, every situation where people don't work has at its root some lack of freedom. Not being able to issue your own currency is one such lack of freedom. Exclusionary property is another. If 85% of Venezuelans are poor, it's because they don't have deserts to homestead in their country. Is it natural to let "large, privately owned estates of more than 5,000 hectares, roughly 12,350 acres" go unused while people starve?
Published: March 30, 2006 4:00 PM
Cosmin,
Stephan Kinsella made an excellent argument a while back on here about how corporations are not by definition "evil" or whatever pejorative you want to use for them, and how a corporation is simply a contractual convention allowing one party to limit its risks to the amount of assets invested only, and is indeed moral. A corporation organized on Yancey's above model is simply a pooling of individual stockholder assets, including property, which by contract with its customers limits its liability WITHIN THE CONTRACTED TRANSACTION ONLY, to the amount of assets invested in the business.
I agree that the modern form of state-corporatism practised in the West is indeed an abomination, though I will not be drawn into another argument about whether Wal*Mart has a right to use the interstate highway system! It isn't anymore real capitalism in the classical sense of the word, but rather a kind of fascism, where the state protects and privileges favored corporations.
This is fundamentally different from the organization of "Yancey Motors Corporation".
Published: March 30, 2006 4:04 PM
"Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that anarchy exists. Within hypothetical society, 10 people decide they will reconfigure and pool their possessions to create a car factory and sell the product for other goods. However, rather than work the assembly line, they hire volunteers to work the line in return for half the product.
Who owns the car factory? Is there coercion?"
Obviously that is not coercion, but you are way off in believing your contrived scenario resembles anything close to real life. What's stopping those "volunteers" from building their own car factory? Or having someone else build it for them, under the promise of payment with produce from the factory? And heck, why not print the equivalent in money beforehand, so the factory builders don't have to wait for the finished product? As you see, those workers could choose to work in the original factory, but it would be on their own terms. They would probably ask for more then half (depending how many they are and the cost of builing their own factory). To recap: on their own terms: no coercion. On owners terms: only under duress.
Published: March 30, 2006 4:15 PM
Cosmin,
I asked earlier what is the definition of "work"?
In regards to your last comment, what is the definition of "stealing"? If one steals a loaf of bread that I, in my anarchistic world, had stored under my bed for next week's consumption, then is it really theft if the alleged expropriator needed it today more than I did? Indeed, why couldn't he take a nap in the bed before skulking away since I don't retire until 10:00 p.m.?
Published: March 30, 2006 4:16 PM
Per,
I agree that socialist anarchists neglect the importance of time. Even Tuckerites. For instance, take occupancy and use as the basis of ownership (Tuckerites talk about this being property, others say that it is not property but possession).
Possession is a basic feature of freedom: I cannot be said to be free to do X unless I occupy the relavent spatio-temporal locations. Now, if I go away on holiday, I cease occupying and using my house. Does that mean you should be able to move in? Tuckerites say not, that this is not what they mean. But if it is not what they mean, then what is important is not simply actual possession, but subjunctive posession, too. So, If I am free to toss a cabbage into the air in two minutes, I must be in possession of that cabbage in two minutes, and possession of that cabbage two minutes away must be included in my list of possession.
But this moves us much closer to exclusive property wherein I can own something I am not actually using, because, were somebody else to use it, I would lose subjunctive possession.
Published: March 30, 2006 4:17 PM
:)
Published: March 30, 2006 4:19 PM
"Stephan Kinsella made an excellent argument a while back on here about how corporations are not by definition "evil" or whatever pejorative you want to use for them..."
Good for Stephan, but I didn't call corporations evil. I asked if they were natural and if their rights are natural.
Published: March 30, 2006 4:19 PM
Cosmin,
What's stopping those "volunteers" from building their own car factory? I don't know what you mean, why don't you tell us? Could it be they lack the skill to do so? Could it be they lack the right possessions? Could it be they lack the discipline to produce real savings?
I noted that you really didn't answer my question. In my hypothetical world, who owns the car factory if those who built it only hire workers to actually work it, but still get half of the product?
Published: March 30, 2006 4:28 PM
Richard, where do you set limits on exclusive property? Are there any limits? Can one individual own a whole country? A city? All non-mountaineus (potentially fertile) land in a country? Can he enforce such a property right? Is enforceability a good way to gauge the extent property can take?
Published: March 30, 2006 4:31 PM
I thought I did answer your question. Those who built it own it. That means nothing, though, since workers would only accept working there on their own terms, so they might ask for more than half the product. I've shown you a clear way they can provide an alternative for themselves in anarchy. Why wouldn't they pay factory builders to make them a factory, so they can exploit it on their own terms? They would choose whichever alternative is advantageous to them. If they don't work in the original one, that one's value goes down. So they're the ones with negociating power. Unless, when you said "Could it be they lack the right possessions?", you meant IP on how to build a car? But that's no longer anarchist.
Published: March 30, 2006 4:43 PM
I see a common flaw to both Socialist and Capitalist anarchism. But it is one of a commission v.s. an omission.
The socialist thinks everyone will be good and wise and the functions of a market will simply take place without an actual market, and that everyone will be excellent to each other in this version of Bill and Ted's bogus journey.
The anarchist things everyone will be good and wise and the functions which are fundamental but transcend the market (e.g. property rights) can be provided by the market. But strictly the property right belongs to the one who bids highest not for the property but for the right.
The former sees the market as the devil and the latter as god. But it is neither. The market is an amoral and natural force of the collective wills of those in it. Those wills can be good or evil, and will affect what is delivered by the market. But the market itself has no will.
The point of agreement is that both see government as evil - the former because it usually corrupts into some kind of corporatist system, the latter because it demands kickbacks or protection money from the corporatists.
And on another note, a corporation is a body without a soul, and normally such undead things are both artificial and evil. The original purpose is to defraud in a liability case. The (weekend at) Bernie character goes bankrupt, but his associate's assets are protected.
If the sum of the liability is less with a corporation than with persons, then it is a fraud since liability can not be eliminated, only transferred. (Or consider debt or risk which are they typical things which affect it - can we limit risk or just transfer it?).
To have any reduction in liability, you need a government to force people to accept this (much like depreciated currency), so no anarchic system can tolerate them.
Published: March 30, 2006 4:59 PM
If I believe that people are self-owner's and Soverign, what if they decide in their soverignity that rights in general don't exist or that my soverignity doesn't exist. There still is an assumption that everyone will play by the same rules. But the whole point of saying values are subjective is so that everyone can have different rules. Foolishness is no better than wisdom, evil no better than good, insanity no better than reason.
But if you then say everyone must respect the virtue of even reciprocal rights as soverign, why stop at one virtue?
Published: March 30, 2006 5:06 PM
"If I believe that people are self-owner's and Soverign, what if they decide in their soverignity that rights in general don't exist or that my soverignity doesn't exist."
Anarchy, for me, doesn't mean a specific person's sovereignty, but the principle of sovereignty itself, which is universal. This either exists or it doesn't. It's not decided by majority. That is why when I talk to people and they ask what, in anarchy, is stopping them from killing me, I ask them why the only thing they find wrong in anarchy is the lack thereof. :)
Published: March 30, 2006 5:18 PM
Cosmin says;
"I thought I did answer your question. Those who built it own it. That means nothing, though, since workers would only accept working there on their own terms, so they might ask for more than half the product."
See GM for an example of how THAT's turning out.
Published: March 30, 2006 5:59 PM
Cosmin,
"Why wouldn't they pay factory builders to make them a factory..."
Pay with what? Their savings or a loan from a bank? Then how is this different from the current system?
Pay with their own money? Could you elaborate on this? Under the current system I can also print Joe Shmoe's Currency Units and buy anything, provided I find a seller who agrees to accept them.
Or you saying that the prospective workers should be able to print their money and then *force* or *con* the resource's owners into accepting it?
Published: March 30, 2006 6:06 PM
"See GM for an example of how THAT's turning out."
Exactly! Inefficient companies go down. Everyone rejoice!
Published: March 30, 2006 6:08 PM
tz sez;
"If the sum of the liability is less with a corporation than with persons, then it is a fraud since liability can not be eliminated, only transferred. (Or consider debt or risk which are they typical things which affect it - can we limit risk or just transfer it?).
To have any reduction in liability, you need a government to force people to accept this (much like depreciated currency), so no anarchic system can tolerate them."
This assumes that corporations cannot exist under anarchy. This is demonstrably false. Under anarchy, the stockholders could still pool property and limit risk through contract in a manner completely consistent with property rights (see Kinsella's article; http://blog.mises.org/blog/archives/004269.asp).
What you are really arguing is that SOME corporations, which rely on corporatocracy to shield them from liability, could not exist under anarchy, and I would tend to agree. But that isn't the same as "no corporations". And under anarchy, corporations as an entity would have no more rights than "society" or "New Jersey" - they would posess only the rights that their stockholders do and no more.
And the only limitation of liability they would enjoy would be strictly contractual.
This would probably make some corporations uneconomic, true. But it has the advantage of preserving the property rights of shareholders.
Published: March 30, 2006 6:10 PM
"Pay with what?"
With the promise of payment with produce from the factory. And heck, why not print the equivalent in money beforehand, so the factory builders don't have to wait for the finished product? You see, in my world, labor itself justifies the creation of money, so you don't have to wait for investers to come with their previously saved money. The factory workers don't have to be coerced into accepting it. It will be equivalent to real value. If someone needs a house instead of a car, he can use the money to buy a house from someone who'll later want to buy a car. It can be transferrable in this way untill it comes back to the car factory who produced that money out of the mere potential of production. Or something like that.
Published: March 30, 2006 6:19 PM
Is the property right of shareholders any different than their property right as private persons? If so, why do they need twice the property rights? If not, in what way is this association of individuals a corporation?
Published: March 30, 2006 6:26 PM
Perhaps we need a definition of corporation in order to debate properly: http://www.investorwords.com/1140/corporation.html
What it says:
"The most common form of business organization, and one which is chartered by a state and given many legal rights as an entity separate from its owners. This form of business is characterized by the limited liability of its owners, the issuance of shares of easily transferable stock, and existence as a going concern. The process of becoming a corporation, call incorporation, gives the company separate legal standing from its owners and protects those owners from being personally liable in the event that the company is sued (a condition known as limited liability). Incorporation also provides companies with a more flexible way to manage their ownership structure. In addition, there are different tax implications for corporations, although these can be both advantageous and disadvantageous. In these respects, corporations differ from sole proprietorships and limited partnerships."
Published: March 30, 2006 6:30 PM
"Pay with what?"
" With the promise of payment with produce from the factory."
Then these are not money units (as in universal means of payments), they are rather commodity futures ("You build a pizza place for me, I give you a coupon for 1000 free pizzas").
The Q then is why this system isn't popular now.
Could be transaction costs of dealing with a zillion types of payments?
=============
"And heck, why not print the equivalent in money beforehand, so the factory builders don't have to wait for the finished product? "
This is actually an unrelated item - idea to print new money and give to prospective workers.
Problems - potential for abuse (bribery of whoever distributes the funds) + inflation.
Published: March 30, 2006 6:59 PM
If anyone cares, Kevin Carson of www.mutualist.org published a rather sophisticated work a while back defending the anarcho-socialist point of view. Kevin's position is to accept the legitimacy of markets and property rights while rejecting absentee landlordism as a valid form of property rights and also accepting the classical labor theory of value. Kevin is a mutualist in the tradition of Tucker or Proudhon, not an anarcho-communist who would attempt to totally eliminate markets and property altogether. I think the full text of his book is still available on his sight and I'm told there is a special symposium issue of JLS forthcoming that features Kevin debating orthodox Austrians. I sent Kevin an e-mail inviting him to join this thread. Here's my own review of an earlier pamphlet of Kevin's which foreshadows some of the ideas he outlines in his book:
http://www.attackthesystem.com/capitalism.html
Here's another economics article I once wrote for anti-state.com:
http://www.attackthesystem.com/economy.html
Per Bylund actually sent me a message praising this article when it was published.
Among the areas of anarchist theory that I find the most interesting are those where anarchists tend to disagree. These obviously include not only economic differences but also matters like abortion, childrens' rights, criminal justice, racial and cultural matters,ecology, religion, etc. My approach to these differences is similar to that of Voltairine de Cleyre's "anarchism without adjectives" or Troy Southgate's "national-anarchism" or John Zube's "panarchy".
Let's say at some point in the future we North American anarchists are able to carry out an anti-statist revolution on our continent just like the original American revolutionaries did. They modeled their system after Republican Rome (and it lasted about as long before the present degeneration into full-blown militarism). Let's say we model our system after medieval Iceland or Ireland or the decentralized, polycentric order of the Holy Roman Empire. My guess is there might be a plurality of property systems and definitions of property rights-Lockean/Rothbardian, mutualist, Georgist, syndicalist, anarcho-communist, etc. The divisions may occur on a geographical basis. Sort of an economic version of the Peace of Augsburg where it was determined that "the religion of the king is the religion of the people". It might be that "the theory of property rights of the established community standards is the common law", if that makes any sense. Or there might be different property systems in the same locality with disputes between members of different property systems negotiating settlements through neutral third-party arbitration. The broader economy might actually include anarcho-capitalist investment firms, anarcho-syndicalist unions, anarcho-mutualist coops or mutual banks, geo-anarchist land trusts, anarcho-communist communes, etc. just like the present economy has different kinds of economic arrangements. This is an issue that I am not all that personally dogmatic about. My main areas of interest are law and foreign policy, not economics (though of course I recognize all of these are related). I would point out that Rothbard himself favored the expropriation of the holdings of "capitalists" who received the bulk of their profits from state intervention and the homesteading of these by workers, consumers, et.al.
Whatever point of view one takes on these questions, there is a practical matter to be considered. There is indeed an abundance of economic interests, ostensibly "private", who are in fact part of an alliance between state and capital. These elements are never going to give up their privileged positions without a fight. Would not expropriation of these elements in some form be necessary for the defeat of the state?
Published: March 30, 2006 9:54 PM
And what happens if the new car factory fails for whatever reason? Then the builders never get paid. If they're paid up front (out of real savings, not monopoly money), they have no reason to care about the future of the factory. So factory builders who get paid in monopoly money (promises of future production from the factory, once it's operating) will charge more (regardless of the time preference issue), making starting their own factory less desirable for the supposedly-"exploited" workers of the original factory.
Published: March 30, 2006 11:05 PM
Keith,
Mises pretty definitively put the labor theory of value, so Carson is starting at a disadvantage.
I agree that there is an awful lot of capital that has been locked up by powerful interests in collusion with governments. But absent those governments, they will encounter a great deal of difficulty retaining it all.
All of this is fairly irrelevant. I don't want any Morgan or Rockefeller property, ill-gotten or not. I simply want to be able to keep what property I have justly aquired. I want recognition of my right to protect that property, by force if necessary, by mutual agreement if not.
And I want to live free of any of the crackpot redistributive schemes I have been reading here (apologies to the late professor Rothbard).
Published: March 30, 2006 11:23 PM
Sounds like you favor fiat money, which cannot work without government force. Not very anarchic.
Cosmin said;
"With the promise of payment with produce from the factory. And heck, why not print the equivalent in money beforehand, so the factory builders don't have to wait for the finished product? You see, in my world, labor itself justifies the creation of money, so you don't have to wait for investers to come with their previously saved money."
Published: March 30, 2006 11:28 PM
Vince, I assume you meant to say that Mises put the labor theory of value to rest. That's quite true, and I find it hard to understand why some people don't see how the "theory" is self-evidently wrong.
Published: March 30, 2006 11:46 PM
"Socialists refer to "capitalism" as the system in which the state hands out and protects capitalists' privileges — and therefore oppression of labor workers. They don't see that capitalism, in the classical liberal tradition, means rather a free market based on free people, i.e., voluntary exchanges of value between free individuals." Maybe they have the right definition and we have the wrong definition. If for most people capitalism means a state aristocracy of capital owners then we have to stop referring to capitalism. Free market is obvious and clear. Liberalism as well.
"Indeed, anarcho-capitalism has always been considered an oxymoron by the self-proclaimed "true" anarchists."
Perhaps there is no such thing as anarcho-capitalism, and it is an oxymoron that just makes the idea sound foolish. If capitalism is bad and exploitative, and anarchy is a bunch of hippie goofballs throwing bombs at carriages, then anarcho-capitalism can only be the worst of both.
I'm not proposing that the ideas be abandoned, because the ideas are good no matter how they are labeled. Promote liberalism instead of capitalism, the free society instead of anarcho-capitalism. You'll find more people interested in what you have to say.
Published: March 31, 2006 12:27 AM
By and large, the difference between socialist anarchists and anarcho-capitalists is their attitute towards theft.
A socialist anarchist thinks it is ok to "expropriate" the results of someone else's labour if the expropriator or the group of expropriators has more need to these goods.
An anarcho-capitalist thinks it is a crime.
The difference is not within the organizational or economic domain - quite socialist communes can happily exist within the framework of anarcho-capitalism - as long as they don't prey or parasite on others. (The opposite is not true, by the way).
The difference is in core ethics. One camp thinks that a need creates a right to exploit others, the other camp thinks that no such right can exist.
Now, of course, every thief thinks he has a need of that object belonging to his victim.
In other words, socialism (of anarchist or statist kinds alike) is an apology of theft. Nothing more and nothing less. Correspondingly, a proper argument against a socialist is few grams of fast-moving lead - when he tries to apply his theory to your property.
Published: March 31, 2006 1:09 AM
Thanks Roy - yes that is what I MEANT to say (damn PDA).
Here's what I would have written if I had been awake and using a proper keyboard instead of a teeny-tiny virtual one with a stylus;
"Mises pretty definitively put paid to the labor theory of value with his proofs of the subjective value theorem, so Carson is starting at a disadvantage."
The problem with the labor theory people is pretty simple - they want themselves, not the purchaser of their labor to determine the value of that labor. We know from Mises, Hayek, Menger, et al that the price of any good is determined by the value the purchaser places upon that good. Labor, to be properly valued, needs a free market of sellers and buyers of labor. In the past, there have been many episodes of the buyers of labor conspiring to (temporarily) depress the price of labor, often by use of government force. That is sad, but in no way invalidates the basic premise that labor, and goods in general, have no fixed intrinsic value, but are valued at whatever the purchaser is willing to pay for it. To think otherwise is to believe that labor (unlike, say, computer processing time or broadband capacity) has som unique, irreducible, premium value, that every labor hour is equally valuable. Think about how fraudulent that premise is next time you post to Mises (or Daily Koz) during the hours of labor that you are selling to your employer at a fixed price.
Published: March 31, 2006 7:43 AM
I'm not enough of an economist to have much of an opinion on matters like value theory. It's not essential to my own position anyway. I do, however, see a serious theoretical and strategic problem with the idea that the state should be abolished but the plutocrats, mercantilists and state capitalists should be able to retain their holdings acquired by statist means. This strikes me as akin to saying that the regimes of China, Cuba or North Korea should be abolished, but the Communist Party officials of these nations should be able to keep their assets acquired through their access to the state or that the Saudi monarchy should be abolished but the feudal oil barons should be able to keep their petroleum assets. I don't want any Rockefeller property either and I certainly oppose the expropriation of geunine private property like individual homes, land, businesses, etc. But to dismantle the state without dismantling the plutocracy with which it is intertwined would really be no abolition of the state at all. The plutocrats would create a new state the next day. Here's a Kevin Carson article on privatization that I think deals with this question reasonable well, drawing on the work of Rothbard, Hoppe, Hess and other anarcho-libertarian leading lights.
http://www.mutualist.org/id45.html
Published: March 31, 2006 9:07 AM
Averros, your equating of real concerns with theft is laughable. There can be no theft if you don't own something. What is debated is the merits of property, and that supercedes the redistribution of property in the form of theft.
The point is, how does one acquire property? Homesteading? What's that? Can he yell shotgun from far away? Does he have to be there physically? If he has to be there physically to acquire it, why doesn't he have to be there physically to retain it?
Vince, the seller also determines the price of his labor. If the buyer decides to only pay a derisory price, the seller doesn't have to accept. Voluntary exchange is mutually advantageous, is it not? Perhaps someone needs to reread Bastiat.
Or at least hear what Keith here has to say. He seems to get it.
I asked Richard to express his position on the limits of property, but any of you are free to do so as well. While you're at it, continue to extoll the virtues of corporations' rights to property. That branch of the debate has gone silent since I gave the definition of a corporation... Why is that?
Published: March 31, 2006 10:13 AM
Cosmin asks us why we associate anarchocommunalism (which he seems to assume is the only form of anarchism) with coercion.
It need not be coercive. Indeed I have no objection to anarchocommunalists setting up communities (either as monks and nuns or in an athiest way, or in some other way). As long as they let us have our communities where private property and trade are allowed.
If they do not - well then that is the coercion.
Perhaps Cosmin remembers that even in Israel (a nation that gave great support to the sort of communities he desires) only 5% of the Jewish population (rather less of the Arab of the population) choose to live in such commumities - and that these many of these communities became less and less equalitarian over time.
Communities that tried to destroy private families and private property did not prosper - people left.
Hence Cosmin's desire not to allow any community in which private property and trade is allowed?
This is not "anarchism", it is state tyranny with a mask on its face.
Luke points out that a way of life of that denies private property can not sustain the vast population of the modern world over time (even the nonegalitarian socialist states, such as the Soviet Union, had to copy market prices for the means of production as best they could - prices from the outside world).
I agree. I have never claimed that anarchocommunalists could sustain the vast population of the modern world over the long term - even if they tried to immitate market prices (and I doubt that people like Cosmin would even try).
However, I still think that moral arguments are useful.
There are many good people who are anarchocommunalists and many bad people. How are we to tell good from bad?
Ask them whether they would allow communities that allowed private property - and you have a good indication.
A person who says "no" will not be impressed by any economic argument, as we are dealing with a person who is rotten to the core.
Whereas a person may not accept economic arguments and still "yes" (on moral grounds).
Published: March 31, 2006 10:30 AM
tz,
Well said.
Published: March 31, 2006 10:34 AM
Cosmin,
Your position on the limits of property would mean that the limit is what any individual, or group of like-minded individuals, can keep others from taking from them. I will grant that this is the true definition of anarchy. It is why I find the idea that anarchy will ever prevail in the future to be something not to be desired, and would, in fact, be the end of civilized man.
Of the two so-called anarchist camps (socialists vs capitalists), the socialist variety is actually more faithful to the idea of anarchy, but are seriously in error regarding economics and material well-being. The anarcho-capitalists are mostly correct on the ideas of economics, but are seriously in error regarding the true nature of anarchy; indeed, many of the versions of anarchy they present seem to simply be proto-states in design- in other words, I don't think a lot of anarcho-capitalists are really anarchists despite what they think.
Published: March 31, 2006 10:47 AM
Paul, I am not rotten to the core. What you don't understand is that it's probably impossible to separate the two visions in distinct communities. Someone growing up in one community might adopt the alternate point of view. If that doesn't happen, if everyone's happy with the arrangement, then fine. But when members of the two trains of thought clash, which one is justified? I say those favoring private property without limits are more likely to extend themselves, therefore they are the initiators of force. Their opponents are justified.
And please, don't bring up kibbutzes or any other imperfect examples from an imperfect world into a debate about the principles of an ideal, hypothetical, anarchist society.
Where do you draw the line between private property and coercion, Paul? Can one person claim property over a whole country? A mountain? The planet?
I have "suffered" (not really) a number of contrieved situations (chemical sheds, bullets, cars...) placed before me, so indulge me one of my own.
Let's say I (even legitimately) acquire a piece of land. Soon afterwards, however, I move to another country. I'm so busy, I don't do anything about my faraway possession. Eventually, I forget about it. Then I die. A number of generations later, my descendants find out that I had some property. According to you, are they justified in going over there and kicking out whoever they find "squatting" on that piece of land?
Yet another case: I have an old car. I don't like it or need it anymore, so I abandon it in some neutral location. Someone finds it. He can't know if I still want it or not. Is it stealing if he takes it? If he does, am I justified in changing my mind and claiming it back from him?
I know the strategy for some of you seems to be to ignore challenges and hope they go away, but, please, someone answer these questions and those from my previous post. Otherwise, continuing this debate would be as useless as a shouting match among deaf people.
Published: March 31, 2006 11:09 AM
Yancey, I know we disagree on some stuff, but you have perhaps pinpointed, or at the very least, very closely approximated, the main point of contention in the debate. That is, pretty much, the goal of a debate, so, thank you for your contribution. :)
Published: March 31, 2006 11:19 AM
Cosmin, I'd like to take a stab at addressing your earlier posts about corporations. My understanding is that, under anarchy, the rights of a corporation are the aggregate of the rights of its individual shareholders, no more no less. What we have today, according to the definition you quoted, is more of a mishmash of joint ownership and state privilege.
That said, limited liability is useful, and I believe that some form of it would survive contractually under anarchy. Shareholders could negotiate with their creditors that only certain, "corporate" assets will be seized in the event of a default. In return, lenders might demand higher interest rates. This agreement doesn't cover third parties, of course. If your factory blows up and damages a bunch of other people's property, each shareholder could be held responsible for his share of the damages once the corporation's assets are exhausted. Investors worried about ruinous claims could buy liability insurance for such contingencies.
Someone else can jump in if I have any of this wrong.
You've also alluded to intellectual property. There is a strong ancap case to be made that IP rights are illegitimate. Stephan Kinsella has compiled a list of links here.
Published: March 31, 2006 11:52 AM
PR, I understand what you're saying, but would that arrangement be named a corporation still?
I have nothing against limited liability defined by contract or any such arrangement. My argument is against those who want corporations as they exist today to perdure in an anarchist society.
Published: March 31, 2006 12:28 PM
"The point is, how does one acquire property? "
The anarcho-socialist position of "property is theft" breaks down after one decides to eat. Yes, by putting food in your mouth you are claiming it as your property. How does the ansac solve the eating paradox?
Published: March 31, 2006 12:51 PM
quincunx, should I quote myself, or should I let you scroll up and read one of my earlier posts?
I'll make it easy for you this time:
""Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, even though he is famous for stating "property is theft" (meaning property privileges causing exploitative conditions), also stated that "property is freedom" in the sense that man is only free when he is the sole owner of that which is in his possession and that which he creates."
There is no contradiction here, although I would've prefered if he used the word "possession" the second time around. As in: "Property is theft, possession is freedom".
What's the difference, you ask? Property is exclusionary in a way that has to be enforced. Possession can be exclusionary, but only when exclusion is naturally enforced."
Published: March 31, 2006 1:04 PM
Cosmin, I think such an arrangement could still be reasonably called a corporation. You have many owners, separate from managers who run the day-to-day operations of the business. These owners can buy and sell their portion without the need to actually parcel out some fraction of the office furniture. Limited liability isn't as important as these features, in my view.
The fact that even one-person businesses often incorporate today has more to do with the state-granted liability and tax advantages I suspect.
Published: March 31, 2006 1:54 PM
Yancey,
I agree with this statement of yours: “Anarcho-socialism is quite nonsensical...�
This, I thought you agreed with “socialist anarchists [are]…Dishonest to the core in that they pretend to advocate the very opposite of what they in fact do advocate, the coercive state.�
But this statement of yours baffles me:
“Of the two so-called anarchist camps (socialists vs capitalists), the socialist variety is actually more faithful to the idea of anarchy, …The anarcho-capitalists …are seriously in error regarding the true nature of anarchy; indeed, many of the versions of anarchy they present seem to simply be proto-states in design- in other words, I don't think a lot of anarcho-capitalists are really anarchists despite what they think.�
I would sincerely be interested in understanding where you are coming from. If the socialists are more faithful to the idea of anarchy than the capitalists, and yet the concept of a-s is nonsensical to you, and furthermore, you feel the a-c’s aren’t really anarchists, then truly, I have no idea what, for you, would constitute anarchy.
Would you mind elaborating?
Published: March 31, 2006 1:56 PM
Paul,
Most "anarcho-socialists" that I have dealt with in debate are no such animal, and are intentionally attempting to borrow the mantle of anarchy (and, almost always, libertarianism) to advance their goals of regulation of the individual. These people are dishonest to the core.
However, there are true advocates of anarchy, and I would tend to classify Cosmin as one, that do largely understand the nature of anarchy and do advocate it honestly (unless, of course, Cosmin is serving as the Devil's Advocate); but, I would not even classify them as socialists since the nature of anarchy cannot preclude the arising of a capitalist sect within it without the use of coercive state to stop it. This is why I classify anarcho-socialism as nonsensical. Even if it is obtainable, it is not sustainable without coercion.
Now, the anarcho-capitalists don't seem to be advocating true anarchy, but, rather, a bare-bones state. I don't consider this dishonest, but just confused about where to draw the line between anarchy and minarchy.
I hope that clarifies what my thinking is.
Published: March 31, 2006 2:20 PM
Cosmin, If you scroll way, way up to your third post.Here you say the worker has no chance (0r minimal chance) to save.And you blame taxes,in part.First this would seem like an argument against taxes,not capitalism.
More importantly,your assertion just ain't so.
Where I live,consumer spending reminds me of drunken sailors on a spree.The bars are full every nite.Also casinos,restaurants,bingo halls,
sporting events, concerts.....the recreational drug business is thriving as well from what I hear.It cant be that all these people are successful entrepreneurs.The poor downtrodden workers are in fact having a heap of fun.Can't stop em,its a free country.
But hang on a sec.Every now and then you see an exception.Someone who has saved and started his own business, now thriving.What would become of this individual, so vital to human progress, in your envisioned anarcho-socialist world?
Published: March 31, 2006 2:30 PM
Cosmin: two comments:
1. It's a bit amusing that you choose states in south america to criticize free market
capitalism. Those countries are prime examples of protectionism, nationalism where landlords
could opress peasants because they were protected by the state. It's got nothing to do with free market capitalism.
2. "Property is exclusionary in a way that has to be enforced. Possession can be exclusionary,
but only when exclusion is naturally enforced."
My question is; when is exclusion "naturally enforced"? And who in, in your anarchistic
society, is going to decide when it is OK to take other peoples property? Sounds very arbitrary to me. The expression "might makes right" comes to mind...
Published: March 31, 2006 2:53 PM
Cosmin, I'm with Ulf - What exactly do you mean by posession being "naturally enforced"?
And who decides when my summer abroad away from my homestead makes me an "absentee"?
It seems to me you are indulging, in support of your an-soc theory that only states are capable of protecting property and adjudicating disputes.
Your squatters, in an ancap society, would have an easy way to find out who owns the property from a private register of deeds, which would spring up to fill the void in the absence of a state. They could then make the choice to contact the owner or his designated heirs to arrange for a mutually acceptable arrangement for buying, renting, sharecropping, etc. Or they could just squat, and take their chances, knowing (or not knowing) if the land is owned or not. Their choice.
Look, we disagree every day with the decisions of the owners of property over what they do with it. But if they have legal title to it, taking it over in any way is simple theft.
Keep in mind, however, in an anarchist world of any hyphenation, there will arise a need to adjudicate possession and use of property. This will be ideally be handled by something like Stefan Molyneaux's "Dispute Resolution Organizations"; http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/molyneux1.html
private entities that underwrite risks and adjudicate disputes. Or we could hand off all decision-making regarding possession to a group of people, or just one big guy with a gun.
Oh yeah, silly me - that's what we have now! (does this make it clear enough to you the current real role of government? - it's all about control of property)
But your presumption that somehow absentee or unproductive owners of land will be able to hang onto it forever is hogwash. It will become relatively expensive to possess land without it generating an income, since these services (dispute adjudication and physical and liability protection)will cost the owner real money. If the owner decides not to deal with any kind of agent, he will find very quickly that he is overwhelmed by lawsuits or the perception of him as a lawsuit or financial risk, hampering the "absentee's" ability to conduct business.
In short, anarchy will remove the current cheap (subsidized) protection of property for absentee owners and replace it with a market-priced protection regime that will allow him either to employ it productively, or else take his chances and find that the vacant land is draining away his capital.
Published: March 31, 2006 3:38 PM
Yancey,
“Now, the anarcho-capitalists don't seem to be advocating true anarchy, but, rather, a bare-bones state. I don't consider this dishonest, but just confused about where to draw the line between anarchy and minarchy.�
It just occurred to me I know how to get your position through my thick skull:
Was Rothbard an anarchist in your view? Is Hoppe? If yes, then there is no controversy in my mind. If no, I would again impose on you if I may, to get you to explain what they advocate that is inconsistent with anarchy and how they advocate minarchy.
Thanks!
Published: March 31, 2006 4:11 PM
Paul-
Agreed - why is the anarchy advocated by Rothbard, Hoppe, et al considered "minarchy", while whatever societal organization that will be necessary to implement a "posession" rather than a "property" regime somehow doen't count as archy?
If you are arguing that property is theft, then we really have little to discuss. If, however, you are arguing that property, as now constituted in the US often memorializes inequity and is sustained by fascist-corporatist government, well then we have some common ground.
But my question remains unanswered - when does my extended absence justify your expropriation of my property? Can that point ever be fairly defined?
More fundamentally - how can we reconcile such expropriation into a universal, moral, fair rule (like the non-aggression principle) that respects natural property rights ?
Published: March 31, 2006 4:29 PM
Cosmin - you may think my statements about socialists being mere thieves laughable.
Let's see if you will also think so of my gun when you try to convert your blabbering into a practical action.
And, no, I don't care of your issues and your theorizing - as long as you stay away from me and my property.
Meanwhile, I have yet to see a socialist of any stripe who'd understand "mind your own business". I guess that has something to do with a deeply seated inferiority complex of those who cannot accept that there are people who don't like the well-wishing meddling and don't want any help in managing their own affairs.
Published: March 31, 2006 4:49 PM
Hi Vince,
Was that entire post directed towards me, or just the first paragraph?
I feel like you are likely responding perhaps to Cosmin.
For what little it is worth, my definition of property is the very standard libertarian one. Grappling with the socialists' definition of property just wears me out. "Property is theft" is a great statement for those of us who have an affinity towards contradiction and confusion. And for such entertainment, I also like the statement "up is down" although it lacks the hint of profoundness of the former.
Published: March 31, 2006 4:56 PM
Paul,
Yep - I should have been more specific. I agree with you, as far as I can tell. And I want to find some common ground with Cosmin and the others. But I am not willing to compromise on what I see as fundamental property rights issues. Either you can own a thing, justly aquired, or you cannot. The things we aquire represent the sweat of our brow and the bequest to our posterity. To agree that these can be taken on any arbitrary basis negates libertarianism.
Published: March 31, 2006 5:05 PM
Mikey, this is what I meant about using real world examples in a debate about principles. It is erroneus. The reason those workers are able to spend money on such "luxuries, is because they are actually exploiters. Sure, they're exploited, being forced to work for less than they could get in a truly free market, but they also buy lots of stuff manufactured with even cheaper third world slave labor, which is why they still have enough money to spend like drunken sailors. Do you think your example holds up for the whole of Africa?
Ulf, you said: "It's a bit amusing that you choose states in south america to criticize free market
capitalism. Those countries are prime examples of protectionism, nationalism where landlords
could opress peasants because they were protected by the state."
That's exactly my point. It used to be like that, but Chavez's agrarian reform does the opposite. It empowers the peasants and takes unused land away from landowners. Yet, you're all here telling me that's a bad thing. I don't really want to use it as an example, since it potentially comes attached with many other regulations that don't necessarily equate to a freer market. And where do you get that I criticize the free market?
"My question is; when is exclusion "naturally enforced"?"
We live in a physical world. There are physical limits as to how much a resource can be exploited. When those limits are met, exclusion is naturally enforced.
Vince, you said: "They could then make the choice to contact the owner or his designated heirs to arrange for a mutually acceptable arrangement for buying, renting, sharecropping, etc."
That the heirs have any claim to that land is baffling to me.
The last few paragraphs you wrote seem to have you agree that absent ownership, and property of unused land are overall bad, and you even propose a sensible way to do away with such abberations. Perhaps our differences are less in nature, than in scale of response to such a non-anarchist situation.
Really, though, I'm going to stop replying to any more questions untill I get answers to my own. Let me reiterate:
I have an old car. I don't like it or need it anymore, so I abandon it in some neutral location. Someone finds it. He can't know if I still want it or not. Is it stealing if he takes it? If he does, am I justified in changing my mind and claiming it back from him?
How does one acquire property? Homesteading? What's that? Can he yell shotgun from far away? Does he have to be there physically? If he has to be there physically to acquire it, why doesn't he have to be there physically to retain it?
Where do you set limits on exclusive property? Are there any limits? Can one individual own a whole country? A city? All non-mountaineus (potentially fertile) land in a country? Can he enforce such a property right? Is enforceability a good way to gauge the extent property can take?
Published: March 31, 2006 5:05 PM
Yancey - "anarchy" merely means "absense of any form of political authority", meaning that relationships between people are not governed by some imposition of force by some privileged class of people.
The connotations of disorder are merely the result of statist propaganda.
In this sense ancap is no less or more "true" anarchy than communist anarchy.
The difference is that ancap is based on shared ethics of non-aggression and natural right to self-defense, as opposed to the (anarcho-)communist fuzziness which boils down to might-makes-it-right at closer examination (and in practice, too).
Vince - AFAIK, Rothbard and Hoppe never advocated any kind of state (even the minimal "night watchman" kind of it) - so they cannot be called "minarchists".
Published: March 31, 2006 5:09 PM
Averros, you seem to be inclined to initiate force. Anarchy will give you your comeuppance.
Published: March 31, 2006 5:17 PM
Cosmin, I'll attempt to tackle your car question.
"I have an old car. I don't like it or need it anymore, so I abandon it in some neutral location. Someone finds it. He can't know if I still want it or not. Is it stealing if he takes it? If he does, am I justified in changing my mind and claiming it back from him?"
If it's clearly "abandoned" then you don't own it anymore. It's like picking up something off the sidewalk on trash day. The trouble comes when I can't figure out (as per your example) whether you still want it or not. So I'd have to ask: on whose property did you abandon this car? (I'm not sure what you meant by "neutral" location) If you left it on my property without asking me then I think I can take it. If it's on your property then I can't. If you've abandoned it on someone else's property without their consent then it'd be up to them.
But a big issue is whether we know whose car it is (was) & can find out your intentions regarding it. If we truly don't know then that changes matters, as we'd then have to guess. Guessing always means we might guess wrong. At that point, if you come back & ask why I'm driving around your car we can figure out a solution, providing we're reasonable people, or failing that, get the whole thing arbitrated by a mutually agreed upon third party. (As to whether that last part would work or not, that topic has been subjected to mountains of discussions on this blog & elsewhere, & I'm not prepared to go into it.)
& if you had actually abandoned it, then no, you have no right demand it back. You can ask, but it would be up to its new owner, because that would no longer be you.
I hope I was clear. I hope, even more, that I was right. I so enjoy being right. But if I'm wrong I really like being corrected, because then I can go on to be right.
Published: March 31, 2006 6:34 PM
Cosmin -- I know how to use force, unlike you armchair revolutionaries, and have my street creds to prove that. I did spend some years living in a good approximation of your version of anarchy.
I also have ethics, and will use force only against those aggressing against me, my family and my property. Precisely because I know that unrestrained violence leads nowhere - and also because I know that law is no deterrent to someone with his finger on the trigger. Only his conscience is.
With enough people like me, your dreams of taking from other people to further your own ends will remain precisely that - dreams. Simply because you're sissies and never saw what the real-life lawlessness looks like, and don't have a clue on how to survive in it - and so do not value the law which is in the human conscience, and not in the legalese or philosophical esoterica.
Now, I have nothing against dreaming. Just don't make a mistake of confusing dreams with the reality - the one which can give you a nasty surprise you won't even have time to hear coming.
The whole point of the notion of property is that it matches the innate law of conscience, and is not a function of some grand scheme of how to make everyone happy. That is why it is called natural law - and it can be entirely derived from a simple observation that people tend to act in their own subjective interests. Read Mises for the derivation of Austrian economics from this simple truth, and Rothbard on the derivation of universal ethics.
It follows that any tweaks with that natural notion of property can only cause conflict and violence. Which is all your communist dreaming is able to produce in the real life. Been there, do not want to go back.
Published: March 31, 2006 6:36 PM
It's good to ease your conscience once in a while, but that rant was completely irrelevant to our present discussion. I'm not denying you the right to defend yourself or what you own. I'm trying to find the meaning of property. Tackle this issue for me, will you?
If, for instance, Donald Trump owned all the land in Romania. Is it your claim that it would be his prerogative to tell everyone to get off his property? Are you claiming he would be justified in shooting all those who don't comply?
Again, I ask of you, ANSWER the questions I put forth, so as I can at least know where you're coming from!
Published: March 31, 2006 7:00 PM
Xteve, your analysis seems to make perfect sense. Yet, it stands in contrast to those who would claim that my fifth-removed descendants would have any right to property that I even forgot about before my death.
Published: March 31, 2006 7:48 PM
Cosmin, I would say your fifth-removed descendants would at least have a tenuous claim to that property, but no absolute right. I suspect even the most hard-core market anarchists would disagree on how valid or invalid that claim would be, which is why these discussions are so important & interesting. These matters are based in large part on theory & custom, & in a "true" anarchist society these issues would evolve & become settled over time.
Published: March 31, 2006 8:57 PM
Cosmin,
Your fifth-removed, forgotten property COULD be left to the owner's children, or sold, or donated. YOU, however, do not have the right to dispose of the property, and it doesn't matter how much you admire Chavez or quote Proudhon.
The thing is, your solution does not even touch the property you seem to covet - rich landowners use trusts to give their property to their children before they die - no triggering event for confiscation. Your solution only works against the property of people of modest means.
I already stipulated that large tracts of unoccupied land are only economic to hold in a state system, and become too expensive to hold long term under anarchy unless productive. This would tend over time to distribute property more evenly while not necessitating aggression. This makes land ownership, absent a state subsidy a self-limiting phenomenon. Aggression against these property owners is unnecessary anyway.
Sure, a person could buy up an entire country and chase everyone out. Then what? Where does the